English 375: The Harlem Renaissance
Spring 2004
Professor Hans Ostrom
Welcome to English 375. Here is some basic information:
My Office: Wyatt 336. Office-Hours for Spring 2004: Tuesday-Thursday, 11:00-12:50, and by appointment, of course. My door is often open at other times.
English Department’s telephone: x3235 (messages); my telephone: x3434 (voice mail). Electronic mail: ostrom@ups.edu. The English Department’s mailboxes are located in the room next to the Philosophy Department’s main office on the third floor of Wyatt Hall.
Home page: www.ups.edu/faculty/ostrom/. A printable copy of this syllabus is posted on the home page.
The University’s Equal
Opportunity Statement
The University of Puget Sound does not discriminate in education or employment on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, religion, creed, age, disability, marital or familial status, sexual orientation, Vietnam-era veteran status, gender identity, or any other basis prohibited by local, state, or federal laws. This policy complies with the spirit and the letter of applicable federal, state and local laws, including Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Sections 503 and 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Questions about the policy may be referred to the University's Director of Human Resources and Affirmative Action (253-879-3116) or the Office of Civil Rights, Department of Education, Washington, D.C. 20202.
Harlem
Harlem, of course, is a part of New York City, a metropolis built on top of an island that Europeans purchased from people who were there first. After the purchase, this part of Manhattan was resettled by colonists from the Netherlands and Germany. (Harlem takes its name from Haarlem, a Dutch city.) In the early part of the 20th century, African Americans and West Indians resettled in Harlem. Shortly thereafter, a cultural transformation occurred. Its influence is still felt, every day, in the United States and worldwide. In this course, we will study the transformation, focusing on the literary part of it, with the understanding that the literature cannot be studied properly without reference to the broader cultural context; therefore, we’ll listen to music, look at art, glance at politics, examine debates about aesthetics, and so on.
If we were to locate Harlem geographically, both today and in 1920, we might say that it lies north of 114th Street , east of St. Nicholas Avenue and the Hudson River, west of the Harlem River and the Bronx, and south of 156th street. Following is an internet link that provides a “virtual tour” of Harlem. You may also access this link via my homepage; click on “Links to Useful Resources” first and then scan the list to find Harlem: Virtual Tour). The link: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/mxb/textmain.html.
Locating Harlem in our minds—our "consciousness," if you will—is a much more complicated task, one that the course is designed to help accomplish.
Some Aims of the Course
This course features the reading and analysis of, the writing and talking about, literature. It is also bound to look at "values," or what people believe to be important. The University Bulletin indicates that a "course in Comparative Values develops a critical understanding of different value-systems--a value system being a structure of beliefs about the relative worth of ideas, acts, or objects--found in intellectual, moral, or aesthetic traditions. Such a course explores the cultural choices individuals and societies make."
Why do people believe that a particular concept, version of history, or particular work of art, including literature, is important? Who disagrees with them--when and why? When and how did certain judgments about values arise? How do we know what people really believe? Who gets to decide what is "valuable" in literature, in culture? We will tailor such basic, broad questions to the literary and cultural transformation labeled "the Harlem Renaissance," which featured many explicit, implicit, and competing statements of what is valuable, is necessary, in literature and other arts and in society. As we read the literature and ask the questions, we will also reveal our own judgments, reaffirm them, doubt them, place them in contrast to the views of others. We will examine our own preconceived notions of Harlem, African-American literature, the Blues, jazz, the 1920s in the U.S., and so on. We’ll be alert to how these notions change, or not, and why. That is, we’ll look at our own positions, vis-à-vis the Harlem Renaissance and related topics.
One assumption with which I begin, with which the course begins, is that many issues, values, and conflicts in the Harlem Renaissance and its literature persist, so that as we study Harlem then we will also be studying the United States and the world and even this campus now. Only a very few literary periods and groups of writers have received as much widespread renewed attention as the Harlem Renaissance and its writers. Works of these writers have been republished at an astonishing rate in recent years; moreover, the renewed attention has come not just from scholars but also from the public at large. This literary era, the core of which belongs to the years 1920-1930, may not be unique, but it is distinctive in powerful, interesting, and enduring ways. Therefore, another aim of the course is to develop an understanding of this distinctiveness. The Harlem Renaissance is also a maddeningly complicated era, a kind of puzzle that satisfies and frustrates simultaneously. One additional aim is to balance the satisfaction and frustration as we honor the complexity.
The Etiquette and Atmosphere of the Course
Here are some guidelines to which all of us should try to adhere. None of them will be surprising or difficult. In fact, I hope they’ll seem familiar, even obvious, but sometimes it’s good to reaffirm the familiar. All are aimed at creating a productive, workable environment.
Books Required for the Course
David Levering Lewis, editor. The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. New York: Penguin, 1994. Paperback.
Wallace Thurman, editor. FIRE!! [facsimile reprint of a literary magazine published in Harlem in 1926]. 48 pages. Paperback.
Langston Hughes. The Ways of White Folks. New York: Vintage, 1990. Paperback. A collection of short stories first published in 1934.
Jessie Redmon Fauset. Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral. Boston: Beacon Press, 1990. Paperback. The book was first published in 1929.
Jean Toomer. Cane. New York: Liveright, 1993. Paperback. A novel, perhaps; it was first published in 1923.
Persia Walker. Harlem Redux. New York: New American Library, 2003. A new murder-mystery/historical novel set in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance.
Elements on Which Your Final Grade Will Be Based
Participation. This includes attendance; productive contribution to discussions and group-work; and some informal writing—specifically, in-class responses to/analyses of music, videos about visual art and music, and videos about history and dance; etc.): about 20 per cent, total
Two essays: about 50 per cent
Two tests: about 20 per cent, total
One presentation (a brief biography of a notable person or discussion of an institution associated with the Harlem Renaissance): about 10 per cent.
A couple more items of note: 1) We will work on drafts of essays in class. Please do not think of this work as optional; take due-dates for drafts seriously. 2) I regard electronic mail as useful for answering brief questions about assignments or due dates. In-person discussions during office hours or over coffee in Diversions seem better for more complicated questions about essay-drafts, works we’re reading, and so on.
Schedule of Class Meetings, Assignments, Topics
Wednesday, January 21: To help you decide whether you want to remain in the course, we will look at the syllabus carefully. An overview of the course. Music. Distribute photocopy from The Harlem Renaissance, by Steven Watson.
Friday, January 23. Please take a virtual tour of Harlem: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/mxb/textmain.html. For today, please read the photocopied section from Watson’s book. Also read, in The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader (hereafter known as HRR), the "Chronology," as well as essays by Du Bois (3-6), Woodson (6-10), Locke (46-52), and Rogers (52-58). Also read Cane, 1-35. Please always read the brief biographies (in the back of HRR) of writers assigned. Music.
Monday, January 26. . Read Cane through page 153 (the end of "Bona and Paul"). Also, in HRR, read "The Negro Artist and Modern Art," by Romare Bearden, 138-141. A discussion of literary genres and values. To what genre(s) does Cane belong? What works does it remind you of? To what extent is Cane a "difficult" book and/or belong to a "difficult" genre? We’ll begin a discussion of the Harlem Renaissance and Modernism.
Wednesday, January 28. In HRR, read the selections from The Big Sea, by Langston Hughes, 77-91, as well as "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (91-95). Also please read "The Negro-Art Hokum," by George Schuyler," 96-99, and "Criteria of Negro Art," by W.E.B. Du Bois, 100-105. What are the implicit and explicit debates about "Negro Art"? What are key areas of dispute? What purposes of art emerge in these debates? What do you think art should "do"—for whom and why?
Friday, January 30. In HRR, read all the poems by Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. Distribute photocopy of essay about Carl Van Vechten’s novel, Nigger Heaven.
Monday, February 2. For today, read the essay about Van Vechten. In HRR, read "Critiques of Carl Van Vechten’s Nigger Heaven" by Du Bois and Johnson (106-109), "The Caucasion Storms Harlem," by Rudolph Fisher (110-117), and "The Harlem Intelligentsia” and "Harlem Runs Wild" by McKay. First essay assigned, discussed.
Wednesday, February 4. For today, in HRR, read the poetry by Bennett, Bontemps, Brown, Fauset, and the three Johnsons (Fenton, Georgia Douglas, and James Weldon). Remember to read the biographical notes on each author.
Friday, February 6. Continue discussing poems assigned for February 2 and 4.
Monday, February 9. Draft of essay due. Review for first test.
Wednesday, February 11. For today, with someone else in class, look at FIRE!! Examine it as an artifact—its shape, its layout, its alleged purpose then, how you respond to it as an object now, the messages its physical presence sends, the circumstances of its creation, etc. Also, read the four-page insert that came with the facsimile reprint. And read the works on pages 1-23.
Friday, February 13. Please read FIRE!!, 24-48. Questions about the test?
Monday, February 16. First test. Music and art. List of Harlem-Renaissance notables distributed. Each of you will choose one notable and prepare a brief oral presentation on her or him. Presentations discussed: what will be expected?
Wednesday, February 18. First essay due. We will probably view parts of Langston Hughes: The Dream Keeper or another video.
Friday, February 20. For today, in The Ways of White Folks, read "Cora Unashamed," "Slave on the Block," "Home," "Passing," and "A Good Job Gone." In HRR, read the selection from Walter White’s The Fire in the Flint, 351-362.
Monday, February 23. Film: Looking For Langston. For today, read, in The Ways of White Folks, "The Blues I’m Playing."
Wednesday, February 25. For today, read the introduction to Plum Bun and pages 11-86 of the novel.
Friday, February 27. For today, in HRR, read "The Task of Negro Womanhood" by Elsie Johnson McDougald, 68-76. Video: Against All Odds: Artists of the Harlem Renaissance. [Continue reading Plum Bun.] In-class writing.
Monday, March 1. Discuss Against All Odds, based on your writing. Video: Dance Black America. In-class writing.
Wednesday, March 3. Discuss Dance Black America, based on your writing. For today, read the rest of Plum Bun.
Friday, March 5. Presentations. Distribute copies of "On the Road" and Simple stories.
Monday, March 8 . Presentations.
Wednesday, March 10. For today, read, in The Ways of White Folks, "Father and Son," "On the Road," and Simple stories. Presentations.
Friday, March 12. Video: Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl? In-class writing.
March 15-19. Spring Recess.
Monday, March 22. Presentations. Review for test.
Wednesday, March 24. Professor attends conference. No class-meeting.
Friday, March 26. Professor attends conference. No class-meeting.
Monday, March 29. You bring in CDs of African-American music that you value. Why do you value it? How can you connect it to the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance? We’ll do some writing about this music.
Wednesday, March 31. More African-American music you and your professor value. More writing.
Friday, April 2. For today, in HRR, read “Wedding Day,” by Gwendolyn Bennett, “The Typewriter,” by Dorothy West, “Drenched in Light” and “Color Struck,” by Zora Neale Hurston. Start reading Harlem Redux.
Monday, April 5. For today, in HRR, read the poems by Mae Cowdery, Arna Bontemps, Joseph S. Cotter, Claude McKay, and Anne Spencer.
Wednesday, April 7. For today, in HRR, read “La Bourgeoisie Noire,” by E. Franklin Frazier, “Dust Tracks on the Road [selection]”, by Zora Neale Hurston, “Reflections on O’Neill’s Plays,” by Paul Robeson, “Negro Art an America, “ by Albert C. Barnes, “With Langston Hughes in the USSR,” by Louise Thompson Patterson, and selections from A Long Way From Home, by Claude McKay.
Friday, April 9. Read Harlem Redux through page 109. Make a return-visit to Harlem, via the virtual tour: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/mxb/textmain.html.
Monday, April 12. Read Harlem Redux, through page 207.
Wednesday, April 14. Second essay assigned, discussed. Video, TBA, but probably As I Remember It: A Portrait of Dorothy West. In-class writing.
Friday, April 16. Review for test. [E.]
Monday, April 19. Finish reading
Harlem Redux.
Wednesday, April 21. Sign up for conferences. Second Test
Friday, April 23. Conferences in Wyatt 336. In the conferences, I will return and discuss the second test, and we will discuss the essay on which you’re working.
Monday, April 26. Conferences in Wyatt 336.
Wednesday, April 28. Conferences in Wyatt 336.
Friday, April 30. Complete rough draft of essay due in class.
Monday, May 3. Food and jazz!
Wednesday, May 5. Essay due.